surprise. more seals.

Okay, so I'm sure you're getting sick of my seal posts, especially as they've been relatively depressing. This one, I'm sorry to say, is not much different. But since I rearranged my seal shifts to accommodate my upcoming trip to Normal, Illinois and accidentally ended up with 4 days in a row, all I've really had going on this week has been seals. I had six animals to show for it, two of the them sloppy seconds from Tuesday night, and a couple of critters left on the beaches. Still, it took me a while to post about them as I've spent the last two days reading the final Harry Potter book (I know, dork), about which I will say nothing, in case you actually care and are still reading yourself...

So starting with the sloppy seconds, SwanSong was impressive, even intimidating in size, (130 kg) but he turned out to be one of the sweetest and most polite sea lions I've met in a while. He'd been seizing on the beach in Pismo Tuesday night. I had the pleasure of giving him an injection Wednesday morning. I'd fretted about it the night before (hearing he'd required four boarders for his first injection), but I found him rather loopy and relatively approachable. The real challenge was boxing and lifting him as we had to ship him in a metal carrier which weighed at least another 100 pounds. Thank goodness for once I had all of three men on my schedule. As much as I'm fond of saying it takes a man to catch a man, it definitely takes a man to ship a man...

Hummus must've come off the drive on beach. This I know because the State Parks girl has been doing a Greek appetizer theme all summer. Hummus was allegedly too difficult to tube feed, so it was lucky for me that he was hungry enough by morning to eat his fish offer instead. Also, he was apparently still quite thirsty as all he wanted to do was drink his pool water. Again, much as I usually resent my sloppy seconds, I'm glad to have had them as they are still in treatment (unlike most of my own animals).

So before we had a chance to ship off the big boy and the thirsty one, we got a call about an animal on Morro Rock. Other than the customary running of the poison oak gauntlet (resulting in the itching I have on my arms, thank you short sleeves), this was the easiest Morro Rock rescue ever. Our little guy, SeaChili, was very close to the start of the trail and was tiny (14 kg) so he was exceedingly easy to carry out. One of my rescue crew stayed up on the bluff and snapped these pictures of my approach.

Followed by the moment of capture. Don't you love how my stealthy team comes out from hiding? You can barely see them in the first shot (and SeaChili couldn't really see them at all). We look so professional. I'm proud. In truth, SeaChili saw me coming the whole time but simply felt too miserable to run away.

It became obvious why SeaChili was such easy prey when we examined his swollen hind end at the site. I regret not making a better case for Butorphanol as I cringe when I look back at the pictures... He ended up dying by Friday, most likely from septicemia, they say. They're thinking all that swelling was from a perforated organ, not a broken limb. Still, how uncomfortable.

Wednesday night, instead of attending the staff meeting, I convinced a couple of volunteers to swing by the drive on beach to pick up Butterball. Butterball was a harbor seal yearling - a very unusual stranding as we usually only see the dependent pups - who'd been used as a chew toy for a shark. You can see here the slice down her nose, but you can't see the majority of the wounds on her body. We flushed them all clean and gave her antibiotics and something for the pain. We were delighted to see she'd made it through to the morning. Unfortunately, the vets determined Thursday that the shark had done too much internal damage to be repaired. Sadly, it wasn't the most dramatic wounds that were deadly. Instead, the more subtle wounds were incurred while being shaken (not stirred) and these resulted in the perforated organs.

Just after we shipped Butterball early Thursday morning, I sent another volunteer down to the drive on beach for Sadjaw. This was the worst broken jaw I've seen yet. This picture doesn't successfully mask the damage, but it's a lot less gruesome than the ones I sent to Sausalito to convince them to euthanize her mid transport (in Santa Cruz). Like Workout, this gal's injury was likely caused by a seal bomb. In this case you could still see a flash burn on her neck.

I thought I'd have nightmares about Sadjaw, but apparently my cats were more on my mind. That's cuz OC spent Thursday in the hospital (again with the chronic constipation - triggered, I can only presume, from my 32 hours spent in Santa Cruz?) only to return there first thing Friday morning (to repair the laceration on his tongue he'd suffered while waking up from anesthesia...). He's fine now. In fact, he spent the day reading Harry Potter with me. He's always quite lovable after his hospitalizations, come to think of it. I'd like to believe it's gratitude, but it's more likely self preservation, as with each incident I'm increasingly urged by my sister (who is apparently no longer his medical benefactor) to euthanize him. He's openly bitter that he's been restricted from dry food (his favorite) and I'm sorry to report that Fancy Feast, like blackbirds, seems to inspire his feline flatulence.

So adding injury to injury, Propeller here came off the drive on beach Friday morning. We assume it was a boat that tore the hole in his shoulder. Lucky for him his wound was fresh and he had full mobility in his all important front flippers. Even so, vet staff was talking euthanasia, but in this case my photos were sent in the seal's defense. Propeller was so full of life, in fact, that he very nearly disfigured me in an unfortunate cross boarding mishap. My inexperienced boarders lost sight of their two goals - protect the one without a board (that would be me) and keep your eyes on the bitey end. We pretty much simultaneously realized the situation had gotten out of hand. They were yelling "stop" while I was just yelling. I left my needle in the animal and as I retreated he grabbed my bottle of betadine, bit a hole in it (shaking it for full effect) and demonstrated what he'd like to do to my face. We decided to give him his last injection an hour later (and with a different cross boarder). Happily, Propeller was accepted into treatment, though he does face a serious risk of infection.

Before I had a chance to deliver Propeller to the site, I came across Lexi. I found her accidentally, on the way to check an inaccessible, entangled girl, who wasn't (I learned later) there anyway. Like many of my seal rescuing pals, I cannot drive past a beach without scanning for anomalies. In this case, I knew the rock in the tideline was not really a rock, as it hadn't been there the day before. Sadly, I found it was a seizing, totally unresponsive sea lion. She'd been there a while, I'd guessed, as the sea gulls had already pecked one of her eyes. I called for help, which soon arrived. Against my better judgment, my help convinced me that maybe, just maybe, my two wheel drive truck could make it through the soft sand and out to the seal (saving us the hike across the beach). I wasn't at all surprised to see my truck stranded mere seconds later. Miraculously, with the help of brawny beachgoers, we got my truck unstuck and we even made it back through the same stretch of sand on the return pass. Still, it was a foolish thing to do, with two seals in boxes already. It won't happen again. So as you may have surmised from my not so subtle note of foreboding, Lexi is also no longer with us.

On Saturday, the last of my four day run, I got a call on the one I'd been looking for when I'd found Lexi. We've been calling her (not so creatively) "entangled girl." She was on an inaccessible dock - no stairs down, no ladder up, always covered with sea lions - but after seeing this photo (which I only got by sticking my head through a fence from the pier above) we started thinking we might make an attempt by boat. We even had our most skilled staff person in town (teaching, of all things, a class on dock rescue). Once we had our plan in place, however, our entangled girl went missing in action.

Saturday night my team also whiffed on a skinny yearling out on the jetty at Morro Rock. I feel guilty as I wasn't there (I went out to dinner in SLO, hoping to be nearer the entangled girl in case we got the call to action) but I've definitely whiffed on the jetty myself, so there's no guarantee I could have done any better. I went out and watched a glorious sunset there (hoping he'd haul back out), enjoying the company of a handful of hungry otters, each one looking like it might be my sea lion. After sticking my shoe in an errant puddle (my penance, I guess, for not being there earlier) I worked my way back out across the rocks, defeated by the anti-climatic ending to my busy week.

And soon I'm off to Normal. I know there's a pun in there somewhere, but I'm too tired to come up with it. Not sure if I'll have computer access there, but if I do at least I will be forced to post about something other than seals...